Review: SBTRKT @ The Albert Hall, Manchester

With the stage groaning under the weight of synths and drums, the big question for Aaron Jerome aka SBTRKT for this tour was how to present his recently released sophomore offering Wonder where We Land alongside his more uptempo and much loved self titled debut.

His solution was to flip between the old and new, which over the course of the evening served to offer varied results. The set struggled with pace during the first half, the up-tempo numbers from his debut such as ‘Hold On’ (above) lifting the crowd up (he didn’t need Sampha’s pre-recorded vocals, all of us sung every word), only to then be held back by the more cerebral atmosphere of the new material. 

The new songs did bring some wonderful moments (particularly as the stage production slowly grew, adding projections and lasers piece by piece), however there was a slight sense of impatience in some quarters of the crowd, and we couldn't help but wondering that it might have been more successful if Aaron has chosen to play a run of old tracks followed by the newer material, rather than flipping back and forth.

By the time ‘Wildfire’ came out it had started to make more sense. Always a live favourite, the crowd went behind it all guns blazing, and the extended live re-working worked brilliantly. The addition of the live drummer and percussionist doing their bit whilst Jerome tweaked and re-edited Yukimi Nagano’s pre-recorded vocals on the fly breathed new life into a track whose swagger remains undimmed. 

It became clear as the set went on that the crowd wasn’t just there to hear the hits, and a track off the vinyl only release Transitions was a surprise highlight, helped along at this point by a warehouse-sized laser. Another post encore highlight was his remix of Radiohead’s ‘Lotus Flower’ (below).

The use of an encore in a live electronic setting seems ridiculous to this reviewer, and was shown to be so, as for the final song ‘Right Thing To Do’, the band pulled off a false ending, crowd singalong and build that had a huge impact. The crowd left satiated, we couldn’t help but feel a final lingering level of sympathy for the guys who’d have to pack all that gear down.